


innocence died screaming (ask me i should know)

by bette (ferns)



Series: Half Light [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Blood, Cisco is so small leave him alone, Dehumanization, Gen, Hartley's a member of team flash, Medical Experimentation, Medical Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team as Family, Temporary Canonical Character Death, Temporary Character Death, but he's still a jerk don't worry, but now he Cares oh no, de-aged character, first in a series, oh my god ok here we go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-13 13:40:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7978696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/bette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was eight years old, Cisco Ramon was abducted from his front yard and believed to be dead along with his older brother.</p><p>Nine years later, there's an explosion at a military black site, and two prisoners escape, 'Asset 010' and 'Asset 005.' Chased by their captors, they manage to find a place to hide. And then, on a mission to retrieve files, one of them disappears.</p><p>[First work in a series.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if anything needs tagging that I didn't tag!

He was taken by _them_ when he was only eight years old. At least that’s how old he thought he was, and his guess was later confirmed by several stolen files.

Cisco had been playing with his older brother in the front yard when it happened. Armando was racing him up a tree, urging him to climb up higher and higher into the leafy branches. Dante was inside, pretending like he was superior to them by acting like he didn’t want to climb trees and pretend to be a superhero with his brothers. Armando and Cisco didn’t need him; they had each other, and they were all the company that they needed.

Even if they did annoy each other more often than not. But that just made the times that they actually got along feel even better.

“Cisco!” His brother called. “You’re closer to the ground! I dropped my plane!”

Cisco frowned as he peeked up through the leaves. “Your green one?”

 _“Duh,_ Paco, did you see me bring out any other planes outside?” Armando rolled his eyes even though Cisco couldn’t see it from his position. “Just go down and get it, Cisquito. You’re closer to the ground, anyways. If I go down there I’ll have to climb all the way back up again, but you’re close enough to the ground to just hop back up into the tree.”

Cisco pouted before scrambling back down the tree. He hated it when one of his brothers was right. Although Armando was usually nicer about it than Dante was.

As he landed on the ground and scooped up his brother’s plane before clutching it to his chest, Cisco stared at the strange white van that was parking in front of his house. Hadn’t it been the same one that circled his block four times already? Yeah, it was, he recognized the license plate. Cisco shivered. In all of the movies that he watched with his brothers, black vans always belonged to the government. And white vans belonged to kidnappers.

“Armando?” Cisco looked up into the tree where his brother was sitting. “Can you come here?”

His older brother did as he was asked, grumbling and complaining the whole way down. “Why do you want me to come down? You got the plane, didn’t you?”

Cisco pointed at the van. “Look!”

Armando did so and then shrugged. “What am I looking at? It’s just a van.”

“What if the people inside of it are here to take us?” Cisco hissed, clinging to his brother.

“You watch to many movies, _hermano,_ ” Armando sighed. “It’s fine. See, they’re getting out right now. See? It’s just a bunch of normal people.”

“But I saw them driving around a lot,” Cisco objected. “They couldn’t have just been searching for a place to park. There are spots all over the street.”

Armando frowned. “Maybe they were looking at the addresses? Because they’re going to one of our neighbor’s houses?”

“Or they’re kidnappers!” Why couldn’t Armando see that this was a serious problem? That these people might have been about to try to take them away?

“I’m sure that they’re not-”

Armando was cut off by the doors to the vans opening, sending people pouring out onto the sidewalk. Although in reality there couldn’t have been more than twelve, to Cisco they never seemed to end. That wasn’t what scared him, though. Even if it did make him nervous.

What terrified Cisco was the fact that all of them were holding guns.

Armando immediately pushed him in the direction of the house. “Go, Cisco! Get in the house!”

“But-” Cisco tried to protest.

Armando shoved him harder and forced Cisco’s legs to move. “No! Tell Mama and Dante and Papa that there are people out here with guns! I’ll be behind you! _Go!”_

Cisco nodded and took off running for the door to his house, which suddenly seemed a million miles away. But before he could reach it, he felt rather than saw that there was now a gun pointed at his back.

“Freeze!” Cisco heard one of the people shout, and he skidded to a halt. You were supposed to put your hands above your head when there was a gun pointed at you. That was what Dante, Armando, Cisco, and their neighbors all did when they were playing and pretending that sticks were guns, anyways. So he spun around and lifted his hands up over his head, shaking with fear. The man in the lead, who was the one who ended up pointing the gun at him, nodded to the other people around him. “Good boy.”

Armando gaped at him before turning to the people who were starting to walk towards them. “What are you doing? Who are you? You can’t just do this! I know my rights, and so does Cisco!”

The man in the lead walked forward until he was standing directly in front of Armando. He pulled something out of his pocket and flashed it open at the boy. “United States government. I’m afraid that anything that we do is perfectly legal, and also for the sake of this entire good country.”

Armando glared at him. “What are you going to do? And I know that the government isn’t immune to laws! We learned about that at school last week!”

The lead man smirked down at Cisco’s older brother before suddenly hitting him across the head with the back of his gun, sending the boy tumbling to the ground. Cisco cried out in horror as he spotted blood that was already beginning to trickle down the side of Armando’s head, pooling on the cement underneath his head.

“Armando!” Someone grabbed his upper arm and twisted his small arms behind his back. Cisco jerked and tried to pull away. “Hey! Put me down! Let go! _Armando!”_

Cisco’s eyes pricked with tears as he tried to fight the people off. There were so _many_ of them, and they were trying to take him away, and why weren’t his parents or Dante coming out to see what was wrong because surely they could hear him screaming, and Armando wasn’t moving…

Something inside of Cisco broke.

Well, ‘broke’ wasn’t really the right word. Breaking implied that there had been something there in the first place to break. This was more like pushing against a piece of paper until it finally gave in. Only the paper was inside of him, and on the other side there was something that made his skin tingle. Cisco’s vision tinted gold and silver, and the ground swayed underneath him as he tried to bite the woman who was dragging him to the white van. He thought that the swaying was his imagination until there was a strange sound and cracks in the earth opened up beneath his feet.

One of the smaller trees across from his house was uprooted as it fell across the road, and chunks of roofing fell off onto the ground. Cisco screamed and tried to duck for cover. They’d had an earthquake drill at school the other day, but he hadn’t thought that he was ever going to need to use the things that his teacher had been trying to show them. Clearly, he had been wrong.

The woman who was holding him let go in confusion as the earth kept shaking, and Cisco used her distraction to run to Armando’s side. He had to make sure that his brother was okay. Armando had to be okay. Armando was always talking about how big and strong he was, always getting into fights with the people who picked on Cisco because he was so small and scrawny and good at math and science. There was no way that he was hurt or worse.

Cisco shook Armando’s shoulder, not noticing the blood that stained the concrete and his brother’s skin. Armando’s eyes were closed, but there was a faint rise and fall to his chest that told Cisco that he was still breathing. Which meant that he was still alive.

“Armando?” Cisco asked softly. “Armando, wake up, _¡Despiértate!_ Wake up! Wake up!”

His brother didn’t stir.

Something grabbed the back of Cisco’s shirt and lifted him up, causing the nine-year-old to kick and thrash. The person ended up being the lead man, the same one that had hit Armando on the head. Cisco screamed over and over again, ripping his throat raw as he tried to punch the man with his thin arms. But the man (hadn’t he said that he was with the government?) just ignored the blows in favor of looking around at the damage that Cisco had accidentally caused to the street.

Although he did note with some satisfaction that there was what looked like half of a tree blocking the door to the Ramon family household. Good. That would make this much easier than he had thought.

“Stop struggling,” he growled, shaking the child. Francisco Ramon had been on their target list for quite some time, although this was the first proper demonstration of his powers that they had ever gotten.

Cisco glared at him. “Put me down!”

The man didn’t listen and instead grabbed Cisco’s throat in his other hand before slamming the boy against the side of the white van. Hard. Cisco stopped struggling, no longer even able to scream as he blinked black spots out of his vision. His little fingers twitched as they reached for the hand that was choking him, but the impact from hitting the van as well as the lack of oxygen made his brain go fuzzy as his lungs screamed desperately for air.

This time when the lead man slammed Cisco’s head against the van, the boy didn’t even feel the impact before his world went dark.

* * *

When Cisco woke up, he was in a tiny room. It had cracks in the cement walls and dark fluid that might have been blood staining the floor. His arms were pinched uncomfortably behind his back by what might have been handcuffs, but he couldn’t really tell because he couldn’t move his neck without sending intense pain shooting through his skull. Cisco’s ankles seemed to be in a similar position.

Where was he? What had happened? Where… Where was Armando? Where was Dante? Mama? Papa?

Cisco wanted to go home.

The nine-year-old tried to curl up in a small ball, but it only made his head hurt more. Tears dripped down his cheeks and he started to shiver, both from cold and from fear and pain.

Cisco heard the heavy door to the room that he was in creak open, but he didn’t bother to look up. He just wanted to go home.

“Stop sniveling,” someone ordered, and Cisco recognized the voice of the man who had hit him against the van. And the same person who had hurt Armando.

Cisco tried to sit up and glared at the strange man. “What did you do to Armando?”

“Your brother?” The man raised an eyebrow. “He’s dead.”

“No. No. No. No. No.” Cisco shook his head despite the pain that the movement caused, repeating the word over and over again. “Armando is okay. You didn’t kill him, he’s okay. He’s at home with Mama and Papa and Dante. You didn’t kill him. He’s okay. Armando is okay.”

“He’s dead, but we didn’t kill him,” the man said with a smirk. “You did. It wouldn’t be right to claim credit for you crime, would it? It was your little earthquake that caused his death, not anything that we did.”

Cisco froze as his shaking increased. He didn’t even notice when he started repeating “no” once again. It couldn’t be true. Armando couldn’t be dead. Cisco couldn’t have been the one to kill him. Armando couldn’t be dead. Cisco couldn’t have been the one to kill him. Armando couldn’t be dead. Cisco couldn’t have been the one to kill him. Armando couldn’t be-

The nine-year-old didn’t even notice that the man was crossing the room until he felt a slap strong enough to make his head snap around. Cisco stared at the man in fear, eyes welling with tears that he tried to stubbornly blink away. No, he wasn’t going to cry. Cisco wasn’t going to cry, he was not, he was _not going to cry-_ it was too late, however, and there were already fat tears sliding down his cheeks. That was apparently enough to warrant a second slap to the face.

The man took a step back as Cisco stared up at him in mute shock. “The first thing that you’re going to have to learn, _boy,_ is that I’m in charge here. If I tell you to do something, you’re going to do it or face the consequences. Understood?”

Cisco narrowed his eyes. “This is illegal,” he tried to say strongly, although it came out as more of a squeak. “You can’t do this. I know-I know my rights.”

The man smirked down at him and Cisco shuddered. “I’m a general in the United States Army, little boy. Even if you did manage to escape, it would be the word of a lying little child against that of a decorated member of the people who protect this country. Who do you think that they would believe?” He took a step back. “My name is Wade Eiling, brat, but you are going to address me as ‘Sir’ or as nothing at all. Is that understood?”

Cisco bit his lip and didn’t say anything, folding up into himself.

“I said,” Eiling growled, leaning down, _“is that understood?”_

“Yes, sir,” Cisco whispered, leaning back against the wall and trying to get as far away from Eiling as he possibly could.

Eiling smirked as he stood up straight again. He picked Cisco up by the back of the neck almost effortlessly and dragged him away from the wall as the child kicked out and struggled. “Come on. I’m going to show you your new room.”

He pried something up off of the floor like a trapdoor, revealing a dark space that didn’t seem very big. Cisco immediately tried to bite Eiling’s arm as he pounded weakly at the man’s body with his bound fists and tried to dig his heels into the floor. No! He wasn’t going to go in there! He couldn’t-no! It was too dark down there, and there were probably spiders and giant bugs and he _wasn’t going to go in there._

Eiling dropped him in without so much as a second thought.

Cisco stood up on weak knees. His ankles were still bound together (with handcuffs, but not the toy ones that Armando pretended to arrest the neighborhood kids with when they all got together and played at being police officers and jewel thieves. These were real), and his arms were still twisted behind his back. Cisco looked up at Eiling as the general closed the door above him, leaving him in complete darkness.

Cisco curled up as small as he could in the corner and started to cry.

He wanted to go home. He wanted Armando to be alive. He wanted to be at home with his Mama and his Papa and Armando and even Dante.

But instead he was trapped here in this tiny room, with no way to escape except for the trapdoor above him that he had no way of opening. Cisco let out a small sob as he tried to force himself to stop crying. He was _nine._ Nine-year-olds didn’t cry. That was something that only babies did. Even if his Mama said that it was okay to cry no matter how old you were or what gender you were, Dante said that it wasn’t. And Armando told him not to cry, too, but that was just because kids liked you less if they saw you while you were crying.

Cisco sniffled and tried to wipe his face before realizing that his hands were still cuffed. The cold metal was biting into his skin, rubbing his wrists raw. Cisco whimpered and leaned back against the wall behind him in an attempt to discover how big the tiny prison that he was now trapped in was. His Mama always said that if you were lost, you were supposed to stay in one place so that people could find you. Cisco had always tried his best to follow that. Which meant that if he stayed there and was a good boy, maybe these people wouldn’t hurt him. Maybe he would get to go home.

Maybe one day Cisco would see his family again.

* * *

**_(Eight Years Later)_ **

* * *

Cisco woke up as an explosion shook the entire building he was in.

The seventeen-year-old (although didn’t actually know his own age) sat up and blindly threw himself into the corner of the room, shaking and hoping that this wasn’t another one of Eiling’s experiments gone wrong. Especially not one that had to do with his only real friend in the entire facility where he had been trapped for what felt like an eternity.

More explosions followed the first one, and this time they were accompanied by screams of pain and fear. Human screams. It wasn’t an unusual sound here, but it was one that Cisco would never get used to.

Cisco squeezed his eyes shut and counted backwards from ten. Just until he got to one, and then it would be over. And if he got to one and it wasn’t, he would keep counting backwards until it was. It was a strategy that he had been using to cope since long before he had been captured by Eiling and taken to the facility. The first time that Cisco could fuzzily remember doing it was-

No. Cisco mentally berated himself. He wasn’t allowed to think about Before. If he thought about Before then he would be punished.

That was when the door slammed open. Cisco jumped and looked up against his better judgement, expecting it to be Eiling or one of the other scientists who owned him.

But instead, he saw the face of a friend.

A woman with red hair and grey eyes crouched down in front of him and held out her hand for Cisco to take before pulling it back to her side with a small regretful sound. “Come on, _Cordero._ We’re getting out of here.”

Cisco stared at her and didn’t say anything. He wasn’t supposed to backtalk anybody, and any form of speaking was backtalk. Even when it was his friend. But as she continued to smile at him gently, Cisco spoke with a voice hoarse from misuse for anything other than screaming and futily begging for mercy. “What do you mean?” He rasped. “Eiling is going to catch us. You know that, Bette.”

Bette shook her head. “No, he won’t. Not if we escape before he realizes that I’m the one who set off the explosions.” She stared down at her fingers with a look of revulsion before looking back up at Cisco. “Come on, _Cordero._ We _‘Assets’”_ -she spat out the word that Eiling always referred to them by with a scowl-“have to stick together. People with powers protect other people with powers. Who else will?”

Cisco slowly stood up and stared at his friend. “R-really? We can run? We can… Escape?”

Bette smiled at him gently. “Yes. Yes we can. Come on, they’ll know that I exploded the walls soon. We have to run.”

Cisco blinked and slowly smiled for the first time in years as he grabbed Bette’s hand (ignoring her small flinch) and let her lead him at a run through the slowly crumbling facility as tiny earthquakes followed their escape. The older woman didn’t pull her hand away once she realized that she wasn’t turning her friend into a bomb and gripped Cisco’s fingers tighter.

Bette didn’t know his actual name, just that he had been stuck with Eiling for even longer than she had. His powers were mostly unknown to her, too, although he didn’t really seem to know very much about them himself. But she knew some basic Spanish, and she had always been compared to a sheepdog, so it was really no surprise that she had nicknamed him “Lamb.” It fit, and he didn’t seem to mind, so the boy’s name stuck. She also didn’t know how old he was, but he didn’t appear to either.

“Look out!” He gasped as he pushed her out of the way as what looked like chunk of the ceiling came down right above her head. Something similar to a shock wave pushed out of his skin and blasted the rock apart, sending rubble showering down around him. Bette smiled reassuringly at her scrawny friend as a small rock bounced off of her shoulder and tried not to think of how much this reminded her of her time serving in the army. How much someone as young as her little lamb didn’t deserve this kind of life.

“Thank you. Come on, they’ll be here soon. They might have a way to trace your powers.” Too late, Bette realized that that was the wrong thing to say. She may have been scared of her powers (and she knew that her young friend was too), but she hadn’t had them for nearly as long as he had. Eiling had given them to him when he was roughly… Eight? Somewhere between eight and eleven judging by his own best guess of how long he had been trapped in the awful hellhole.

_(“My first night, at least I think it was my first night, th-they dropped me in a hole. I couldn’t get out, and it was so small, and-and Eiling wouldn’t let me out for so long…”)_

But he just nodded and picked up the pace, his thin legs pumping as he ran in the direction of the flickering exit sign at the far end of the corridor. For the first time in years, it seemed like escape back out into the real world was finally in sight.

Bette smiled and pocketed a couple of rounded rocks. She wanted to make sure that she had something on her that could be used as a weapon. Bette just hoped that they wouldn’t explode inside of her makeshift pockets that she had made by freeing a few of the stitches in her clothes. That would have left her mostly naked, and probably with burns and shrapnel embedded in her body. The woman has seen enough of that when she had woken up to find Eiling and his scientists tearing her open again.

As soon as they were out of the building, Bette turned to the boy beside her. “I know that they did a test on you last night, I heard you screaming,” she said softly, trying not to scare him. “Can I pick you up? You must still be weak. Is that okay? Can I hold you?”

Cisco bit his lip before nodding slowly and quickly, shoulders tense with fear. Bette nodded reassuringly to him and then carefully picked him up as gently as was physically possible. She also tried not to touch his clothes; her time with Eiling had shown her that her powers didn’t usually work on human skin, although cloth and other inanimate materials were all fair game for her… Bombs. Whatever they really were, they could be made from just about anything.

Which was why Bette had to be careful with her little _Cordero._

Silently, Bette reaffirmed her mental promise to keep him safe as she felt him bury his face in the crook of her neck with a small whimpering sound, the same one that she had internally vowed when she first laid eyes on him-a scared, skinny little boy with too-long filthy hair, struggling weakly in Eiling’s grasp.

Her lamb was too young to face this hell. And she would make sure that neither of them were ever captured again.

* * *

Cisco looked nervously around the small bare apartment. There didn’t appear to be any threats outside of the cardboard boxes and that littered the place, and the way that Bette smiled at him gently helped to alleviate his fears of being attacked from one of the shadowy corners.

“The owner of the building out of town for a few weeks,” she murmured quietly. “He’s visiting some relatives down in Fawcett City. Don’t worry, I checked. And we’ll be long gone before he get back, I promise.”

Cisco nodded quickly, like a nervous bird, before looking around the room once again. His gaze fell on one of the cabinets, and he sprang forwards before automatically flinching back and cowering away, pointing at the cabinets and looking at Bette with wide eyes. “Is there… Do you think that they left food for when they came back? Do you-do you think that they would mind if I took some?”

Bette shook her head and walked over to the cabinet before opening it and pulling out a dusty bag of chips. She held it out to Cisco invitingly. “Here. I’m sure that our friend whose future apartment we’re borrowing won’t really mind if we eat some of his chips.”

Cisco stared at it for a moment before quickly snatching it away and shovelling handfuls of the salty potato chips into his mouth. It had been so long since he had had something to eat, something that actually tasted good and wasn’t moldy or rotten or spoiled or stale enough to crack your teeth on (even if these chips were very very stale by comparison to most others). Cisco couldn’t care less that there was grease getting all over his face, as long as there was actual food heading down into his stomach.

Bette pulled the bag away carefully and pressed a chipped glass of filmy water into his hand, which he gulped down. Usually he wouldn’t trust any water or food that was given to him, but this was coming from _Bette._ He trusted Bette, more than he trusted any other human to exist. Cisco could vaguely remember trusting people like that Before, of climbing trees and building things that weren’t weapons and were made of pipe cleaners and tape instead of metal and wires and chemicals. But that was Before, and he wasn’t allowed to remember Before, so he wouldn’t. He’d just trust Bette.

“I’ll have to run out to get you some new clothes,” Bette said, taking a seat on the threadbare couch with a small sigh. “We both need them. And a shower. The last time that I had a shower was when…” She paused and shuddered. “When I kicked you in the ribs during that ‘training exercise’ that Eiling made us do.” She closed her eyes. “As a reward for doing it.”

Cisco nodded and ducked his head back down into his shoulders. He was familiar with Eiling’s rewards. Hot showers, a full meal, less testing for a week or so. Cisco’s ‘rewards’ were usually books; Eiling wanted him to build things for him, weapons or tools that Eiling sometimes turned and used on Cisco himself. And the weapons were always strange. Cisco didn’t understand why Eiling wanted him to build them, only how they worked and how they were assembled.

_(“B-but why do you want me to make something like this, sir?” Cisco automatically tensed and skittered back, hugging his shoulders. He should have known better than to question Eiling. His word was law. Whatever he said, Cisco had to obey. Or else he would be punished, and punishment was usually even worse than the testing._

_Eiling grabbed his throat and threw him back against the wall. Pain exploded through Cisco’s head and spine, and a choked cry rose up in his throat before coming out strangled. “Don’t_ ever _question me again, brat. Or you’ll find out what it’s like to be locked inside of a sensory deprivation tank. I imagine that with your powers, it would be even harder on you.”_

_“Y-yes,” Cisco groaned, climbing to his feet. “I understand.”_

_“I understand…?” Eiling cuffed his head hard and sent Cisco sprawling once again._

_“Sir!” Cisco gasped up from his place on the floor. “I’m sorry! I understand sir!”)_

Bette patted the couch beside her. “Come here. It’s nice.”

Cisco tentatively sat down and slowly leaned against Bette’s side. He tucked himself up underneath her arm, curling up closer. The first few times that they had been forced by Eiling and the scientists to share a cell, Bette had been terrified of her fledgeling powers. Hell, she still was, but at least now she knew that the strange purple glow that signified the explosions would always be absent when someone _else_ initiated the physical contact with her. Of course, she wouldn’t let just anyone touch her, but her lamb was one of the few people left on earth that she was comfortable with.

And she doubted that that would ever change.

Cisco closed his eyes, all of the little aches and pains in his body fading into the background. The couch was comfortable, Bette was warm and soft, and this was the best that he had felt in a very long time. If he could just… Stay like this, for the rest of his life, then everything would be okay. Eiling wouldn’t be able to get to them, and Bette wouldn’t be able to blow things up. Cisco wouldn’t be able to hurt people. Hurt them the way that he had hurt… Him.

He couldn’t remember his brother’s name. Why? Why couldn’t he remember his brother’s name? Before Eiling captured Cisco, he’d had a brother. No, two brothers.

And Cisco had killed one of them. That much he knew, that much he could remember. It was one of the few things that Eiling didn’t scold him about if he tried to remember.

Underneath him, Cisco felt Bette suddenly stiffen, and he automatically did the same.

Bette tried to force herself to relax again before sighing and realizing that she would have to tell him what was going on. “Eiling”-his jaw tightened at the name and he curled away from her a little bit-“had files on us. About our powers, about the _things_ that he did to us. I need to find them and destroy them before anyone else gets their hands on them.”

Cisco’s eyes widened. “Files?”

Bette nodded. “He would write them while he _tested_ us. I think that they were labelled by number-our asset numbers.” She shuddered. “005 for you, _Cordero,_ and 010 for me.” Bette swallowed. “I just hope that… That there aren’t eight other assets that we have to free.”

“B-but you’ll get the files, right?” Cisco asked nervously. “You’ll destroy them so that they don’t have them anymore, right?”

“Of course,” Bette promised. “I won’t let them take either of us again. I’ll get the files in a few days. For now, we have to stay low and keep our heads down. I don’t want Eiling to know where we are, which is why we aren’t with anybody that would know who I was.”

Cisco nodded and tucked his arms and legs up closer to his body. He understood the need for discretion. If Eiling found them again…

_(“Were you trying to escape, Asset?”_

_“N-no, sir. I swear I wasn’t. I was just looking for the thing that I built earlier, sir. It’s gone, and-” Cisco faltered and cut himself off as Eiling glared at him. “I-I’m sorry, sir.”_

_“You’d better be. I hope you haven’t forgotten what happened when you tried to make those little dampeners for yourself.” Eiling sneered and Cisco flinched away._

_“No, sir, I haven’t. I just didn’t think that it was finished and I wanted to keep working on it.”_

_Eiling glared down at Cisco. “Was that backtalk, little boy?”_

_“No! No sir!” Cisco gasped. “No, it wasn’t! I swear it wasn’t!”)_

“I’ll try to find us some new clothes, too,” Bette promised. “And food. You can use the bathtub while I’m gone, okay?”

Cisco stiffened. “Wh-where are you going?”

“I need to know where the files are before I can steal them, so I’m going to the library,” Bette replied, stroking his dirty hair. “They have computers there that I can use.” She paused. “We need to cut your hair. It’s too recognizable.”

Cisco tensed even more and shook his head quickly. “No. I don’t want-” He jerked his hands up to his neck, where the shock collar (Bette felt the familiar rage coiling in the pit of her stomach) that Eiling had forced him to bear had left a scar because of how long he had been wearing it. “I don’t want them-I don’t-scissors, I don’t want them near-”

“I understand,” Bette assured him. “I won’t do anything that you don’t want me to, _Cordero.”_ She paused. “Can you tell me your name? Your real name? It’s safe now that we’re away from Eiling.”

Cisco hesitated and looked at her. He wanted to tell her, but he wasn’t allowed to be Cisco anymore. He was a weapon. A tool. He belonged to Eiling. He was just another Asset.

Bette saw his panic and sighed. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me, little lamb. It’s fine.”

Cisco ducked his head and nodded, hugging his shoulders.

_(“You aren’t Francisco Ramon anymore. You belong to me. Is that understood?”)_

Bette squeezed his arm. “I’ll be back soon, alright?” She promised as she stood up. “It hopefully won’t take me too long.”

Cisco watched her leave with wide eyes and then sat up on the couch. He wanted to shower, but he also wanted to eat, but he also wanted to find something to read because reading had been one of the few things that they had allowed him to do at the facility where he had been kept. Eiling had wanted an engineer to build things for him, and Cisco wouldn’t have been able to do that without reading some sort of instruction book or textbook. Eiling understood that much, at least.

But this person probably didn’t have any of the books that Eiling would have let him read. And he didn’t want to break the Rules and read something that Eiling wouldn’t have wanted him to.

Even if he was free, Eiling could still find him and punish them.

* * *

Cisco woke up screaming and kicking in an unfamiliar place.

He rolled off of the… Bed? No, no, it couldn’t be a bed, that wasn’t right at all. Eiling would never give him a bed. Weapons didn’t get beds. Only people got beds, and he wasn’t a person. So why was he in a bed? Why wasn’t he shivering on a cold hard floor? This didn’t-he wasn’t-why? Where was he? Where was Bette? Where was Eiling? Had he hurt Bette again?

Arms wrapped around him, and Cisco automatically tried to jerk away. They would hit him, they would punish him, they would punish Bette, no please no…

“Shh, _Cordero,”_ someone murmured in his ear. “You’re safe. We escaped. Eiling can’t get to us here, and he won’t have anything to go on once I get ahold of the files. We’re safe from him now. He has no idea where we are, okay? He can’t get to us.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself just as much as Cisco. “I’ll keep you safe.”

“Bette?” Cisco rasped. His throat hurt from screaming, and his entire body was shaking. “Where…?”

“We escaped, remember?” Bette reminded him. “We’re hiding out here, we’ve been hiding out here for three days already. Shh, it’s alright.”

“But… Eiling?” Cisco asked. “He’ll find us!”

“No, he won’t,” she reassured her friend. “And if he does, I would rather die than let him get his hands on either of us ever again. Especially you.”

Cisco buried his face in her chest, trembling. The seventeen-year-old bit his lip to muffle a small sob. They would never really be free, would they? Eiling would always be able to find them. Even when they thought that they were safe. Couldn’t he track them, or track their powers? The only reason that Bette could walk down the street without people knowing that she was an Asset was because she hadn’t been marked by Eiling the same way that he had. Everyone would always know that he was property.

“I’ll protect you, little lamb,” Bette promised. This was the third night in a row that she had had to do this, and Bette wasn’t getting very much sleep because of it. Although that wasn’t entirely fair to her lamb; she wasn’t exactly free from nightmares herself. Cisco had been with Eiling for years, while she… Actually might have been the same. It had been almost a year since she had woken up on a table being sliced open. But in her mind that was still nothing compared to the hell that Cisco had endured.

The first time that she had met him, Bette had been appalled by just how much of a monster Eiling really was.

_(Bette struggled weakly in the man’s grasp, the stranger’s grip tight enough on her upper arm to leave bruises. She didn’t want to accidentally hurt him the way that she had hurt so many others, but if he didn’t put her down soon she might have to resort to that last-ditch tactic in order to escape._

_The man who was marching her along ignored her struggling as he called to a woman standing outside of a door, “Smitherson! Where should I put her?”_

_“General Eiling wanted her nearby,” Smitherson replied in a southern accent with a small half shrug. “Cell 345 should work, as long as you let him know that that’s where you’re putting her.”_

_As the man nodded, a loud scream echoed down the hallway toward them and made Bette’s hair stand on end. The man didn’t seem to think anything of it, just rolled his eyes and kept trying to move Bette forward as she dug her heels into the floor. The man tugged harder on her arm. “Move, Sargent. Or I’ll tell Eiling that you were being difficult.”_

_That was when she saw the boy, who was being dragged down the hall in her direction by Eiling-a scrawny teenager, filthy and thrashing, his clothing in tatters. His feet were bare and his eyes were wide and dull, blood dripping down the side of his head from a small cut above his eyebrow. Thin, clinical scars marked the skin that Bette could see, ticking up his arms and curling around his stomach. Something in her gut clenched painfully as she realized how old they were. How long had this_ child _been trapped here? How long had Eiling had him?_

_Eiling himself, who was holding the boy by the hair (Bette winced in sympathy as her own scalp tingled), nodded to the man who was marching Bette along. “Jackson! Take Asset 010 to Asset 005’s most recent cell. I want to test its powers against her.”_

_Powers? This boy had powers too, like Bette did? How long had he been captured? How had Eiling managed to get his hands on him? Had the child’s family_ willingly _sold him over in exchange for their own lives? Had he been a runaway that Eiling snatched off the streets?_

_All that Bette knew was that she had to protect him. ‘Assets,’ as Eiling called them, needed to help each other. They were both trapped in hell, weren't they? The least that Bette could do was try to help him stay alive._

_As Bette was shoved forward into the tiny cell that was barely big enough for both her and the boy to stand in, Eiling shoved the kid in her direction._

_“You know what to do, boy,” Eiling growled._

_He stumbled over his own feet, looking at Bette with pure terror. The boy slowly reached out to her, shifting his weight from foot to foot and cringing back as though he was scared that she would hit him. He probably was; who knew what Eiling had done to him in the time that he had been with the general?_

_As soon as the kid’s fingers made contact with Bette’s shirtsleeve (she stayed as still as possible so that she wouldn’t scare him off and accidentally make him do something that Eiling would punish him for), he let out a small strangled gasp of surprise. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and gritted his teeth, entire body shaking oh-so-slightly with what might have been pain or fear. Bette didn’t know what he was doing, what Eiling had forced him to do, but she could tell that it wasn’t good and was most likely painful._

_When the boy’s eyes snapped open, Bette’s own eyes widened in shock as she saw that they were glowing gold and silver. But it was only for a moment, and then they faded back to dark chocolate brown in the dim light of the cell. Bette tried to catch his gaze in an attempt to apologize on Eiling’s behalf but he had already lowered it submissively to the floor._

_“What did you see?” Eiling demanded._

_This time, the boy did look up, and he made eye contact with Bette. “I’m sorry” he mouthed to her, before looking back at the floor and turning to Eiling._

_“Nothing, sir. I didn’t see anything.”_

_It was a lie.)_

Bette kissed Cisco’s forehead, smoothed his long hair, and held him closer to her. “Assets have to protect each other.”

* * *

Cisco sat cross-legged on the couch, watching the TV through the window (the person in the apartment across from theirs in the building next to them, which wasn’t abandoned, was always watching the news at a high volume. Perfect for Cisco and Bette to watch the news and see if Eiling was looking for them publicly yet) with wide eyes. They were reporting on an explosion; an explosion at the same building that Bette had gone to to retrieve the files on both of them. The explosion was probably caused by her, there was no need for alarm. Eiling hadn’t caught her, everything would be fine. Everything _was_ fine. Bette was fine.

Cisco repeated that to himself over and over again. Maybe if he said it enough times, he would believe it.

That was when the camera panned over to a woman who was staring up at the smoking building in shock.

“Miss?” The person holding the camera asked her. “Miss, did you see what might have happened up there?”

“N-no,” she stammered, looking shocked at being put on the spot. “But I saw something-a blur, the same one that I’ve been hearing about. The one that saves people.” Her cheeks turned pink. “I didn’t even believe that it was real until I saw it with my own eyes. I thought that it was just another one of those urban legends that have been circulating since that science thing exploded.”

Cisco froze. He knew what the woman was talking about. Bette had asked him to keep an eye out for any signs of people with powers, whether they were scouts that Eiling had set out to look for them or just potential allies. And the strange blur that people reported seeing was one of them. Maybe… Maybe they had taken Bette. Done something with her. Given her back to Eiling, even.

No, no, no, this was bad. Cisco had to find her. He had to get out of here and he had to save her.

(She’d said-a friend, she had a friend, a safe one, she’d given him the address. He’d go there first. Right? Right. He’d go there _now_ he’d go there _first_ before Eiling could find either of them with his new Asset. Bette would be there waiting Bette would be there and she would be safe and everything would be okay.)

The metahuman jumped to his feet and ran for the door, not bothering to grab anything on his way out. It wasn’t like he had any other possessions, and Bette wore everything that she owned on her body, so he didn’t even have anything _to_ grab anyways. And if he stole something from the apartment that they were living in it would only weigh him down.

Cisco had to find Bette. He had to find her. He had to he had to he had to he had to.

The teenager didn’t even realize that his powers had been activated by his emotions, tiny ripples being sent outward off of his skin in barely visible waves that looked almost like an expanding heat mirage to the naked eye. It sent out little tiny tremors through the earth, shaking the building around Cisco as he ran down the stairs.

Usually he would have been terrified of using his powers, whether it was on accident or on purpose or because Eiling had made him. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was Bette’s safety. If Bette wasn’t okay… No, Cisco would find her. She’d be alright. She had to be alright. Bette was older and stronger and more powerful than him. She would be okay.

Assets had to stick together. Cisco would find her.

He didn’t even notice that his vibrations had gotten stronger until he stepped down and the concrete underneath his feet split apart.

Cisco immediately stopped in his tracks and scrambled backwards, eyes wide as he stared at the crack in the sidewalk. He hadn’t meant to do that, and he opened his mouth to tell Eiling as much before remembering that Eiling wasn’t there. He couldn’t punish Cisco for using his powers without permission even though it had been on accident.

But his distress had seeped through his skin, and something bubbled out around him almost like a shockwave. It was the strongest one that he had ever created thus far, large enough to throw a car away from him and across the street to slam into a tree.

Cisco stared at it for a moment before taking off running, bare feet stinging each time that they hit the cement. He was even more terrified of the people around him now, the ones that were staring at him with wide judgemental eyes. They may not have noticed the asphalt breaking, but this was something that they hadn’t been able to ignore.

They would capture him, they would sell him out to Eiling, they would give him to whatever had possibly hurt Bette-

He kept running, faster and faster and faster. Cisco’s lungs started to burn, but he _couldn’t stop,_ couldn’t stop or else-

_(Cisco screamed as the whip cracked down across his back again and again. He hadn’t been fast enough. He hadn’t run for as long as Eiling had wanted him to. This was his punishment for being a failure, for being so worthless even as a test subject._

_This was his punishment for not being the perfect weapon._

_Someone grabbed his hair, lifting his head up even as he tried to plead for them to stop. “You deserve this, Asset,” Eiling growled. “You were told to be faster, and you weren’t. You disobeyed orders, and you defied the rules. If you do that again, well… We’ll have to see about just how thick your skin really is.”_

_“Please,” Cisco gasped. “Please, I’ll be good, I’ll listen, just don’t hit me again, please-!”)_

Cisco turned and ran down a side street, more and more of his power pouring out into the air. His ears started to buzz like there was a wasp or a bee hovering right beside them and keeping pace with his sprinting. It hurt, he wanted to find Bette, but it _hurt_ so much and he just wanted to find her before-

 _(Cisco gasped and jerked away from the drop of blood on the wall. How had he-what was going on? He’d seen his brother, his_ dead _brother, the one whose name he couldn’t quite remember. Whatever drugs that Eiling had given to him this time had allowed him to see his brother again._

_He couldn’t let Eiling know. If he knew, he would never give Cisco the drug again, because it might be considered a reward. And the only rewards that Cisco was allowed to have were books and occasionally a little extra food._

_But if he kept his mouth shut about the effects, if Cisco pretended that the drug hadn’t given him just as much secret joy as it had agonizing pain… Maybe then Eiling might give it to him again. Maybe Cisco would be able to see his dead big brother again (his name, why couldn’t he remember his brother’s name?), talk to him even though it was a hallucination._

_Cisco didn’t know what his powers did, but if it gave him a chance to see his brother again, it didn’t matter.)_

Cisco skidded to a halt and ducked into an alley. He flattened himself behind a trashcan and folded his body up onto itself, breathing heavily.

He had to find Bette. Bette. Bette. Bette.

But everything hurt and he was so tired and scared and… And…

He let out a sob and collapsed forward onto his knees, energy bubbling out of his hands and sending a large tremor through the earth. This was wrong, this was wrong, this was wrong, this was all wrong and bad and scary and he didn’t want to-please, he wanted Bette. He wanted Bette. He wanted Bette.

“Hey, kid. Are you okay?” Someone, someone _unfamiliar,_ asked, and Cisco let out a small gasp and jerked backwards, hands coming up to shield his face. His powers pushed outwards, and Cisco could feel them sending things backwards away from him-cars, trees, _people._ No, no, that was fighting back, that was fighting back and fighting back was never allowed. Never allowed. Never never never.

Cisco covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut and tears trickled down his cheeks. Monster. Monster. _Murderer._ Freak. He deserved to he captured, he deserved to be taken, he deserved to be tested on because he was a monster and a freak and a weapon and an Asset and he would never, ever, be anything more.

Something pinched the side of his neck and Cisco gasped. He was more than familiar with the sensation of a needle in his skin. But before he had much time to register it, somebody picked Cisco up in their arms, and his world spiralled into darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

When Cisco woke up, he was in a cell and not strapped to a table like he had expected to be.

It was larger than he had expected it to be. Maybe these people didn’t work for Eiling after all. That didn’t make them better, of course, it just meant that there would be different rules that he would be expected to follow. Different tests to be carried out on him as he begged and pleaded and screamed for them to stop. Different punishments when he inevitably failed to perform adequately or accidentally broke one of the Rules or disobeyed one of the Orders.

But hopefully they wouldn’t realize that he was supposed to be in a smaller cell.

That was when Cisco noticed that there was someone watching him. Three someones, actually.

One of them was the person who had brought him here. The Asset. Cisco wondered how they were controlling him; all Assets had to have some method of control. Otherwise, what would stop them from going rogue and rebelling against their Handlers? Maybe it was that red suit. That was probably how. Cisco could  _ hear _ the technology inside of it humming and whirring in his sensitive ears.

The other two were Handlers, not Assets. A woman and a man, the woman with her longish hair tucked back behind her ears and the man wearing glasses and a black jacket. That wasn’t what the Handlers usually wore, but these people clearly weren’t working for Eiling. If they had been, there would have been no reason for Eiling himself not to be there to punish Cisco personally.

“Hello?” The woman called into the cell, and Cisco stiffened before shrinking back against the wall. The woman frowned. “Do you know your name? Can you tell us your name?”

A test. This had to be a test. The Handlers were trying to see if he would remember Before or if he had Obeyed and forgotten. If he had forgotten that he was Cisco and only knew that he was a weapon, a tool, an Asset for them to use.

So Cisco didn’t say anything.

The woman and the man exchanged looks while the Asset studied Cisco intently. This time, it was the man that spoke.

_ “¿Cómo te llamas?” _ He asked, and Cisco blinked. He-he  _ knew _ that language. Partially, anyways. He knew the words. But he didn’t understand what the man wanted from him. Did they only want to know his name because they were testing him to see if he remembered any of Before, or did they want to know so that they knew who it was that they were testing and punishing and using as an Asset? Cisco couldn’t tell them. He wasn’t allowed to tell them.

The man looked at the woman. “He recognizes Spanish, at least, but I don’t think that he knows or wants to answer.”

“Ask him if he wants something to eat,” the woman said with a small frown, crossing her arms. Cisco flattened himself against the wall at her hostile posture. “Whoever he is, he’s way too skinny. And his growth is definitely stunted.”

_ “¿Tienes hambre?” _ The man in the glasses asked after shooting the woman Handler a small look.

Cisco shook his head and he closed his eyes and cringed against the wall. He wasn’t allowed to be hungry. He had to be strong, he had to be a weapon, he had to be the perfect Asset. Which meant that Cisco couldn’t let them see how hungry or thirsty he really was. No matter how much he wanted to say yes, he had to say no and act like he wasn’t starving.

“Well, you have to eat  _ something,” _ the woman said, shaking her head and turning to the Asset. “Can you get something for him? One of the meals that we’ve been feeding Nimbus.”

The Asset nodded and disappeared, trailing sparks as they ran down the hallway away from Cisco’s cell. Cisco wondered why they hadn’t been locked up yet after catching him. Maybe the Handlers were going to do tests later, and they didn’t want them to fight too much so the Handlers were trying to tire them out with mediocre orders and small tasks. That had to be it.

As soon as the Asset had returned, the front part of Cisco’s cell opened partway (he was pretty sure that the Handler with the glasses had been the one to open it) and a tray of food was set down in front of him by the red-suited metahuman (that  _ was _ what they were called, wasn’t it? Assets?). Cisco tried to jump back and slammed into the wall, gasping as the other Asset sped back out to stand beside their Handlers. The cell door closed to Cisco’s relief, and he crawled into the corner with the tray.

He studied the tray with disbelief. This was too much, didn’t these new Handlers realize that? This was way too much food. Maybe this was all that he was going to get for a few days. That would explain the quantity. But it wouldn’t explain why it wasn’t rotten or moldy or stale or spoiled. There was a sandwich with something green and white inside of it lying beside an apple. He hadn’t seen fruit in so long; everything in the apartment that Bette had found for them had to stay preserved for long periods of time.

Hopefully the sandwich would do that. He had to keep something to ration if he ate the apple now. But there was nowhere in the cell for Cisco to hide it… But there hadn’t been before, and he had managed just fine. He just had to tear off some of his shirt to cover the food. Cisco would do that later, when he had eaten the apple and pretended to eat the sandwich.

“Why do you think that he’s not speaking?” The woman Handler asked.

The male Handler made a few unfamiliar gestures with his hands and arms before shaking his head. “I… Don’t know, actually. He isn’t deaf, or at least I don’t think he is, and he recognized Spanish. I think he recognized English, too. He could be mute, though, but he either doesn’t want to respond to ASL or he doesn’t know it.”

Cisco tried not to look at them as he ate the apple in quick bites. However, he still heard the woman Handler sigh and looked up just in time to see her shaking her head.

“Come on. We’ll leave him here while we try to figure out what to do with him with Dr. Wells.” She paused. “I’ll have to check him over. I didn’t get a chance to before you caught him.” The Handler looked at the Asset. “Do you know where Bette is?”

Cisco stiffened and stared at them, rising up forward onto the balls of his feet from where he was crouching with his back pressed against the wall and his body tucked back into the corner. Bette. They had Bette. Bette was here. He had to find her he had to bring her back he had to find her please if he didn’t find her who knew what would happen to her? Please, he had to find her. Bette, he had to find Bette before they hurt her!

The Asset and the female Handler didn’t seem to notice his distress, although the man in the glasses obviously did. He frowned and looked back and forth between Cisco and his fellow Handler before taking a small step forwards and standing with his palms braced against the glass of the cell. Cisco jerked away, but only succeeded in banging his back against the wall.

The Handler studied him for a moment before stepping away and tucking his hands behind his back. “Bette?”

Cisco perked up again and clenched his fists. He didn’t  _ want _ to fight these people, because it was always worse when he fought, but if they would just tell him where Bette was… Then he would let them do whatever they wanted to him. Anything at all. Any test, any punishment, he would bear it, if they would only tell him what they had done to Bette.

“Do you know her?” The Handler asked. His friend and the Asset both looked at him and then at Cisco.

Cisco closed his eyes before nodding quickly and hopefully. Maybe they wouldn’t hurt him because he was telling the truth. Maybe they would even tell him where Bette was.

“Would you like to see her?” The Asset offered.

Cisco stared at him. Yes, of course, of course he wanted to see Bette, but  _ Assets were not allowed to talk. _ Not without permission, anyways. Didn’t this new Asset understand that they would be punished for speaking out of turn? Weren’t they scared of the two Handlers standing right beside him, within easy hearing range? Assets weren’t allowed to talk. Even if they weren’t with Eiling, it was a universal law that Assets couldn’t make noise unless they had express permission from their Handler.

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” the female Handler said doubtfully. “If he does know her, how do we know that they were on good terms?”

“Caitlin, this kid is, what, thirteen?” The man in the glasses scoffed. “There’s no way that they would be enemies. On terms that might not have been the best, sure, but… Not enemies. There’s barely enough on this kid for him to weigh ninety pounds soaking wet. There’s no way that he would pick a fight with Sargent Sans Souci on purpose. From what you said, Allen, he didn’t even try to fight you before running away.”

The Asset nodded and seemed to take that as a sign to speak. “I don’t think he has a handle on his powers yet. Maybe they just started developing?”

The male Handler in the glasses shrugged and turned around as he started to walk back down the hallway. “It’s possible. Do we have anything on the facial recognition software yet?”

The woman started following after him. “Not yet. But Dr. Wells will let us now if it gets a hit. And maybe we should tell Bette that he’s here. See if they really do know each other or if it’s the name of somebody else that he knows.”

As the two Handlers walked away, Cisco’s fellow Asset looked at him. The red mask covered some of their facial expressions, but Cisco could hear their heartbeat. Too fast, too fast, not quite normal. It was almost… Nice, in some way. How parts of it seemed to skip beats and crackle and hum.

The Asset kept looking at him for a few moments longer, and then he turned on his heel and ran off down the hallway, chased by trails of lightning tinted yellow.

The cell suddenly lurched underneath him, and Cisco gasped in surprise as the entire box moved  _ backwards  _ and into something that looked like a giant tunnel with other boxes, other cells, around it. None of them really looked occupied, although Cisco could faintly hear yelling coming from one of them. It had to have been pretty far away for it to be so quiet. This place must have been even bigger than he thought.

Cisco closed his eyes and tried to take deep breaths. Bette. He had to focus on finding and saving Bette from these new people.

He had been so close to freedom, so so so close. Sure, Cisco may not have had a proper home, but the rundown apartment that Bette had basically stolen had suited them both just fine. There had been food; he was good at rationing, he always had been.

_ (“What is this, boy?” Eiling narrowed his eyes down at Cisco. The teenager looked down at the floor and hugged his shoulders. _

_ “No-nothing, sir. I promise, it’s nothing,” he protested weakly. _

_ “If it’s  _ nothing,  _ then certainly you won’t mind if I take it away.” Eiling marched out, carrying the food that Cisco had been trying to save for later. The teen watched him go with wide eyes, hardly daring to hope that he wouldn’t be punished for the act of trying not to starve. _

_ That was when Eiling signalled to the man standing outside of Cisco’s cell door with his gun at the ready. “Teach this little brat a lesson about obedience. I have a meeting to attend with General Lane.” _

_ Cisco quailed back and tried to curl against the wall. No, no, at least Eiling would try to keep him alive. At least Eiling’s brand of pain was somewhat familiar. Who knew what the strange guard would decide to do to him? Who knew what kinds of weapons he had to inflict pain on Cisco with? Who knew if he would stop when the boy had passed out from agony or exhaustion or both?) _

The seventeen-year-old tried to stay awake. He really did. He had to; the new Handlers hadn’t Ordered him to fall asleep yet, and if he hadn’t been Ordered to do something then he wasn’t ever allowed to do it. Not without some other form of permission at least. It would usually come from the Supervisor, if it came at all. Eiling had been the Supervisor before, but Cisco hadn’t seen the new one. They probably trusted the two Handlers to keep an eye on the Asset for them without incident.

But he was so tired. And… And he hurt all over. His powers had taken a lot out of him, whatever it was that they had been doing. (They had never formed a bubble like that before, and the only time that he could ever recall them making something akin to an earthquake was Before. But he wasn’t allowed to remember that) And he would need all of the rest that he could get, because whenever he used his powers on accident all of the tests would increase tenfold.

Even these new Handlers would probably follow that rule. Wouldn’t they?

Cisco bit his lower lip and slowly started to relax against the cell wall. He knew that it was dangerous to relax. It was always dangerous to relax in one of the cells. Relaxation was Against the Rules. But he was tired and he knew that there were tests coming and he needed to sleep.

He needed to… He needed to…

_ (Cisco kicked out weakly against the straps that held him down to the table, wrists straining as well. He couldn’t move his head because of the loop around his throat, which was tight enough to restrict his breathing. But that didn’t matter, because he  _ knew _ what they were going to do to him. Eiling had been talking about it for days already. _

_ The boy had recognized the word from his older brother (no, he didn’t have an older brother, he had to forget or they would punish him). Ar- _ he _ had come home a few days before Cisco’s capture with a disgusted look on his face and the story of what they had done in science class earlier on his tongue. _

_ Of course, he hadn’t been repulsed by what he had been forced to do, but rather by his classmate’s reactions, but the story stuck with Cisco all the same. _

_ What remained of his shirt was pulled off, and something was pressed into his mouth to block out the screams that Eiling and the scientists that worked for him knew would inevitably come. Cisco felt something being drawn on his chest and stomach with marker (he knew the feeling from doodling on his arms in literacy and when he was hiding in the bathroom during gym class) and tried to pull away, but the straps kept him in place. _

_ Something sharp pricked against his torso, and Cisco squeezed his eyes shut. The last thing that he heard before the pain began was Eiling’s voice. _

_ “Calm down, Asset 005. Stop struggling.”) _

Cisco awoke with a start, a half scream tearing its way out of his throat before he managed to swallow it back. He couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t make any noise without permission from the Handlers. He shouldn’t even have gone to  _ sleep _ without them knowing about it. Although they probably had known and would possibly punish him for it later, if the low humming from the corner that Cisco knew meant that there was a security camera was anything to go by.

Cisco tucked his legs up tighter against his chest and rubbed his shoulder. There were scars there on both arms, wrapping down around his wrist and all of the way onto his hand. They’d been trying to find out what caused his strange visions and blasts, or at least he thought that they were. They hadn’t told him anything after all.

That was when the cell shifted and  _ moved _ again.

None of the other ones had done that, although this one had when it was bringing him up to the wall earlier. Maybe now was when they were going to do the tests? Maybe they were going to make him fight the other Asset, the one that had brought him here. Eiling had only made him fight Bette one or two times, but every time it had hurt. Cisco hadn’t wanted to do it. But it wasn’t like he ever had a choice in the matter.

The Handler with the glasses was the one standing outside of the door to the cell with a tray at his feet. Cisco was pretty sure that it was holding food, but that couldn’t be right. Assets didn’t get more food than they needed to survive, and he had already been given that amount. He shook his head disbelievingly. “How long have you been sleeping?” He asked, and Cisco tensed. “Seriously, you’ve been out for at least a day.”

No. No no no. he hadn’t meant to sleep that long, he had only meant to rest for a moment, now he was going to be punished for his Disobedience.

Cisco cringed against the wall and braced himself for a blow as the Handler tapped something into what looked like a flat box coming out of the wall. The door opened (that was how it was controlled? Strange) and the Handler stepped forward in Cisco’s direction before pausing and then taking an unsure step back.

“I brought you breakfast-er, dinner, now,” he said, picking up the tray at his feet. “I figured that Caitlin would forget because of what happened earlier and Allen would be too preoccupied with trying to get drunk to feed you or Nimbus today.”

Cisco stared at him with disbelief. But… He had already eaten. Even if it had been a day, why was he being fed again so soon? He still had the sandwich saved (even if it was probably not as good now) and he had just been  _ sleeping without permission.  _ Cisco didn’t deserve more food. Not when he had just clearly flaunted the rules.

The Handler held out the tray. “Here. You can take it if you want, or I can give it to you.”

Cisco blinked slowly at the man in the glasses. Was this a test of some kind? He couldn’t tell. Maybe they wanted to see if he knew that he wasn’t allowed to eat? In that case, he had to stay silent. If he said something, then the Handler would punish him for breaking the rules. Silence was his best option.

But instead of closing the cell and taking the food away or dragging Cisco out into the hallway beyond to do tests with the other Handler or whoever the Supervisor was, the man in the glasses set the tray down on the floor and pushed it toward him across the cell in Cisco’s direction. Cisco blinked down at the food in confusion and surprise.

A water bottle, another sandwich, and an orange. Were they drugged? Poisoned? Part of a test to see if he would eat without being ordered to? That must have been it. Cisco leaned back against the wall away from the Handler and awaited permission to eat.

The Handler looked at him for a moment before frowning. “You can eat, you know.”

Cisco took that as permission to move and grabbed the orange. He wouldn’t touch the water for now; who knew what they had done to it. And he would try to save this sandwich the way that he had saved the other one.

Then the Handler sat down across from him, the door to the cell still wide open.

Cisco froze. No, no, he had been right, this  _ had _ been a test, and he had  _ failed. _ Now he would be punished, now he would be beaten and tested and hurt because he had failed and failure was unacceptable.

The Handler coughed awkwardly and rubbed his arm. “You… You knew Bette, right?”

Cisco stared at him without making a sound and braced himself for punishment.

He wasn’t expecting what the Handler said next, and the ground seemed to pitch underneath him.

“I’m sorry, Bette’s dead.”

Cisco froze. Not shaking, not blinking, not even breathing. No. No. No no no no no no no no no no no no. Bette wasn’t-Bette  _ couldn’t _ be dead. No no no no no. Bette had saved him, Bette had helped him, Bette was his friend, she couldn’t be… She couldn’t be dead. No, this had to be a trick, a lie, a test of some kind. It had to be. It had to be. Not Bette. Not Bette.

Cisco scrambled backwards and squeezed his eyes shut as he gripped his hair and drew his knees up to his chest. No no no no no this wasn’t happening. This was a dream. This wasn’t happening. Bette wasn’t dead. She had been captured and he had to save her, but she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead.

His entire body started to shake as fat tears slid down his cheeks. Cisco tried to stop himself from crying; crying was a sign of weakness that would be punished. But he couldn’t.

They’d killed Bette. These new Handlers had killed Bette. What would they do to him? Would they just beat him and torture him and test him, or would they kill him too? He didn’t even know  _ why _ they had killed her. For all he knew it could have been because she had helped him escape from Eiling’s facility.

But… That meant that in a way, it was his fault. He had killed Bette. He’d killed Bette just like he had killed his brother. He was a murderer.

Cisco felt like he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t hear anything except for his heart pounding in his ears. Everything felt like it was compressing, because he had  _ failed _ he had  _ killed  _ and now Bette was  _ dead _ because of him. This was his fault, all his fault, if he hadn’t gone with Bette and stayed at the facility then she would still be alive, still be free. But she was dead. Dead. Bette was dead-

A hand rested on his upper arm and Cisco jerked away with a small cry of fear.

The hand pulled away. “Okay. I won’t touch you. Okay.”

Cisco curled up tighter and folded himself up into a corner, fingers tangled in his dark hair and knees pressed tightly against his chest in an effort to make himself look small. He would be punished for this, he would be tested, he would be cut open and burned and beaten and tortured and ripped apart and then left to put himself back together again-

“Breathe. You need to breathe. You’re having a panic attack.  _ Breathe.” _

An Order. That was an Order. Or at least it was said like one, wasn’t it?

Cisco tried to suck air into his lungs, curling away from the Handler, who had sat down beside him with his hands in his lap. It was hard, so hard, he could hear  _ everything  _ and feel too much and it was all just so hard, please, he wanted to leave, he wanted to get out of here, he wanted Bette to be okay, and he wanted to be free again. Cisco wanted to be free.

“There you go,” the Handler said encouragingly. He picked the water bottle up and held it out to Cisco, who eyed it warily. Who knew if it was drugged? Poisoned? If this was part of a test? Handlers  _ never _ helped Assets unless it was for some kind of test, and even then they rarely (if ever) offered any support whatsoever. “Here. Drink something. You’re very dehydrated.”

That was an Order too. He had to-he had to listen. He had to obey.

Slowly, Cisco reached out and took the water bottle from the Handler, who nodded approvingly. “Good. Can you tell me your name?”

Number. He must have meant number. But did that mean that Cisco had permission to speak? Would he be punished if he said anything? But it was an Order to tell the Handler his number. So he had to. Even if Cisco would be punished for it, he had to.

Cisco swallowed. “Asset Number 005.”

The Handler blinked. “Five. The number five.”

Cisco nodded and ducked away.

The Handler’s jaw clenched and he stared at Cisco. The boy wondered if he had done something wrong. Surely now he would be punished. Surely now he had broken one of the Rules and would be forced to pay for it. This Handler would beat him, would hit him, would whip him, send him away to be tested. Force him to use his powers over and over and over again until he succumbed to the visions or to exhaustion from working without a break.

The Handler clenched his fists and Cisco quailed away, scuttling backwards until he was pressed into the far corner away from the Handler. No, no, he’d made a mistake, maybe they hadn’t wanted to know what his number was with Eiling after all, now he would be  _ punished- _

One of the Handler’s fists made contact with the wall and Cisco jumped, folding up into himself in an effort to hide from their inevitable rage in his direction. He was sorry, he hadn’t meant to do something wrong, he was just trying to be good and Obey an Order that the Handler had given him so that they wouldn’t kill him the way that they had killed Bette.

But now they would take him and they would test him, they would cut him open and break his bones and inject him with poisons and damage him and taunt him and torment him, please no. Cisco wanted to beg, to plead, to ask the Handlers to let him go, to not hurt him or test him or punish him, but he knew that it was useless. Whatever they wanted to do to him, they would do, and he wouldn’t be able to stop them.

The Handler was still staring at him, eyes wide and breathing heavily. They chewed their lower lip before frowning and reaching out toward Cisco’s arm, pulling it back when the teenager flinched. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just-”

The Handler broke off and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, they weren’t as angry as they had been before. But Cisco could hear his heartbeat; it was beating quickly and furiously against the Handler’s ribs. He was still mad, and when the Handlers were mad it meant that Cisco would be the one punished for it.

“You’re not a number,” the Handler finally said. “You’re a human. Well, a metahuman, but you’re still a person. Being a metahuman doesn’t stop Allen from having feelings, and it certainly doesn’t stop you.”

Metahuman? Was that what they called Assets here?

Cisco opened his mouth. He knew that he would regret talking without permission, because he would be punished for it, but he had to know. He  _ had _ to. Bette had been the only family that Cisco had had, and he needed to know. Even if it got him punished or tested.

“W-was it quick?” He whispered before curling away with the expectation of a blow.

It didn’t come. “I think so. A-the Flash tried to stop General Eiling from killing her, but he was too late. He saw an explosion and by the time he got there… She was gone. I’m sorry.”

Cisco froze. Eiling? He had been the one to kill Bette? But how? Maybe these new Handlers had sold her to him. Given her away just like they would any other Asset. And now Bette was dead. Dead. Dead dead dead dead dead dead dead-

_ (“If you so much as move a muscle without my express permission, I’ll kill you,” Eiling growled, and Cisco bit his lip. He knew that Eiling would make good on that threat. But… But he had to get away. He didn’t want to use his powers. They  _ hurt _ , they hurt and Cisco hated using them. Hated seeing things, unless it was on one of the rare occasions that he caught a glimpse of his dead brother. And that was hardly ever. _

_ Eiling pointed to the corpse lying in the middle of the room. “I want you to use your powers on him. You aren’t leaving this room until you manage to tell me about this man and what he was doing breaking into my facility.” _

_ Cisco nodded minutely and crept forward, one hand outstretched. He wanted to stay as far away from the dead body as possible while still touching it (as little as he could while still picking something up with his powers). Eiling snorted and shoved him in the body’s direction, fingers pressing down painfully on one of the fresh lacerations on Cisco’s back. The boy let out an involuntary yelp of pain and stumbled toward the lifeless form, one hand grabbing the too-cold wrist that looked like it had blood dried to it. _

_ Cisco gasped as pain lanced through his head for a moment and the world flickered blue. _

_ He still hadn’t gotten used to the strange feeling of using his powers. Of seeing… Possibilities. That was what Eiling called what he could see, anyways. Sometimes they happened. Sometimes they didn’t. And sometimes they had  _ already _ happened. They were possibilities. _

_ This time he saw… A woman, one that he had never seen before. She had what looked like a remote in her hand, and attached to her belt was a gun. Cisco shuddered. He was pretty sure that what he saw in the visions couldn’t affect him, but it didn’t hurt to be safe when you were faced with a potential threat or someone who might have been a Handler. _

_ The woman’s mouth opened, but before she could say anything Cisco was thrust back into the real world, trembling from the use of his powers. _

_ A blow from Eiling caught him across the back of his head, and he winced as he was sent down down to the concrete floor. “What did you see, brat?” _

_ “A-a woman, sir,” Cisco stammered, “with brown hair down to her waist. I-I didn’t see where she was, but she was holding something in her hand. And she was getting ready to say something, but I stopped being able to see her before she could.” _

_ Eiling sneered down at him and kicked him in the ribs, making Cisco automatically curl up in a futile effort to protect himself from any further blows. “But you didn’t hear what she actually said?” _

_ Cisco shook his head. “N-no, sir, I didn’t.” _

_ “That’s failure, Asset 005.” Eiling shook his head. “I guess I’ll just have to leave you in here until you’ve learned your lesson about obeying and what happens when you forget your place.” _

_ Cisco jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain. “No! Please, sir, please don’t leave me in here, I’ll be good, I promise I’ll be good, just don’t leave me in here!” _

_ “Was that  _ backtalk?” _ Eiling growled. _

_ Too late, Cisco realized his mistake. His eyes widened and he tried to correct himself. “No sir! No, sir, no it wasn’t!” _

_ “Maybe you should spend some time in here and think about what you’ve done.” Eiling turned around and marched out of the room. Cisco tried to run after him, but the door closed before he could reach it. The boy threw himself against the door, trying to break it down, but it had already been locked. Cisco was left inside with the corpse. _

_ After several more failed attempts to free himself from the room, Cisco curled up in the corner and closed his eyes, trying and failing to pretend like there wasn’t a dead body locked up with him. He covered his ears as tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and he tried stubbornly to push them back. Crying wasn’t allowed.) _

“Whoa, whoa, hey!” The Handler held up his hands and Cisco jerked back, readying himself for the blow that never came. “It’s okay. You’re safe here, in the Pipeline. Eiling can’t get to you. He doesn’t even know that there’s anything down here; he didn’t look when he broke in here”-the Handler’s voice faltered-“er, I mean, he doesn’t know that you’re here. Calm down.”

An Order. That was an Order that he had to obey, or else he would be punished. Tested. Sold over to Eiling.

Cisco took several deep breaths and hugged his shoulders while bowing his head. He would accept his punishment. He would take it. Whatever they were going to do to him, he could take it. Any test, any punishment, he would have to endure it. For Bette. For Bette. For Bette.

The Handler nodded and stood up. Cisco waited for him to grab a whip or maybe even use his belt on him, but it didn’t happen. Instead, the Handler just turned around and walked out of the cell before closing the door once again, leaving the teenager with the tray of food.

Cisco stared after the Handler in confusion. Why hadn’t he-oh. The Handler probably had to talk to the Supervisor, whoever they were, to see exactly what Cisco’s punishment would be. Exactly how to hurt him. Exactly what Cisco’s powers were, and how they would best be able to exploit them for their own gain. Later, the Handler would come back, and  _ then _ Cisco would be punished and tested and tortured.  _ Then  _ Cisco would pay for breaking the Rules. Relearn his place.

The seventeen-year-old stayed stock still, completely frozen except for the occasional blink or shallow breath. He hadn’t been Ordered to sleep yet, and he had already broken that Rule once, so he had to stay awake. If he fell asleep he would be punished. He had to wait for them to give him permission before any rest came.

But it didn’t come. No one else visited him that night, Handler, Supervisor, Doctor, or even Asset.

Cisco didn’t dare to move a muscle.

* * *

In the morning (or at least he thought that it was morning since he didn’t have any way of seeing outside), the Handler returned. The same one that had given him food last night. The tray was still lying where he had left it, practically untouched except for where the Handler had picked up the water bottle and where Cisco himself had picked up the orange before putting it back down again.

The Handler opened up the cell and gestured for Cisco to stand, which he did obediently. The Handler frowned down at the tray of food before looking back at Cisco. His eyebrows furrowed. “Were you up all night? It didn’t look like you moved at all.”

Cisco didn’t reply, just lowered his gaze submissively to the floor and bowed his head while tucking his hands away behind his back. He could hear the Handler walking up to him, but forced himself not to move away or make any sounds of fear or apprehension. That was Disobedience, and he couldn’t afford to be any more Disobedient than he already had been the night before.

Cisco closed his eyes and made himself stay still as the Handler touched his shoulder and gave it a small tug. “Come on, we have to give you a checkup or Caitlin will skin me alive.”

Cisco’s heart skipped a beat. Skin him alive? He didn’t want that, no, he didn’t want that to happen to him, please, please, he didn’t-

But the teen allowed himself to be led along through the hallway and over to what looked like an elevator. As soon as they were inside, Cisco allowed himself to look quickly around without the Handler noticing. He had only ever been in an elevator a few times that he could recall, and almost all of them were Before, which meant that he wasn’t allowed to remember them.

All too soon, the doors opened, and the Handler kept leading Cisco through the new facility. He didn’t allow himself to look around. That was probably a violation of the Rules, and he didn’t want to break any more than he already had.

The Handler pulled him into a room, one that smelled all-too-familiar to Cisco. He tried to block out the memories of what happened last time that he was in a room like this, but couldn’t stop the choking fear that threatened to swamp him with terror. Too late, the boy realized that he had stopped walking and caused the Handler to look at him with expectant confusion. No, no, no, he’d Disobeyed, he’d flaunted the Rules, he hadn’t meant to but he had, and now he was going to be punished for it.

However, instead of hitting him, the Handler just walked over to a button on the wall and pressed it before moving his mouth close to it. “Caitlin, I brought your newest patient down. Where are you?”

“Right here,” the other Handler from before said as she walked in. But this time she was wearing a white lab coat. She wasn’t a Handler after all; she was a Doctor, and that meant that it was time for tests, possibly instead of punishment. The Doctor smiled at Cisco with what might have been kindness before turning to the Handler. “Can you go get Ba-uh, can you go get…” She looked at Cisco before sighing. “Just go get Barry. We’ll need him in here if our metahuman starts using his powers.”

The Handler nodded and left. As soon as he was gone, the Doctor turned to look at Cisco. “Hi there,” she said warmly. “I’m Caitlin. Can you tell me your name?”

Cisco blinked at her. The Handler had gotten mad when he had told him his number, but… But Cisco wasn’t allowed to have a name. So maybe he should just say his number again. “Asset Number 005.”

The Doctor winced and paused for a moment before waving to a gurney. “Can you sit down on there for me?”

Cisco nodded do as she asked, tucking his hands in his lap while bowing his head and awaiting further instruction. He could see straps on the gurnee, and knew with dread that the Doctor was going to Order him to lay down, and then she would do the straps up and get out a knife and-and-and-

The Doctor smiled at him gently before turning around and picking up a stethoscope. Ah, so she was going to make him wait for the test. The Doctor turned back to him. “Take your shirt off, please.”

Cisco did as he was told and set it down beside him. The Doctor had turned back around as he did so, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a pen and some paper. As she spoke, she moved to look at him again with the same soft smile on her face. “Okay, this might feel a little cold on your skin, but it won’t hurt at all, don’t wo-”

The smile dropped and she stared at him, eyes wide with horror. Cisco stiffened. What had he done wrong? He’d followed her orders, he’d done as she had asked, he had tried to be good and Obey every Order that he had been given so far whether it was from the Handlers or from a Doctor, what had he done wrong?

He followed the woman’s gaze down to his chest. There was nothing there, just his scars and his ribs. What was she looking at?

The Doctor snapped out of her shock and tried to smile again, although her eyes were damp and her mouth was shaky. “Like I said, I just need you to stay still for me while I do this, okay?”

Cisco did so, not even shivering as the cold metal of the stethoscope pressed against his chest. He wondered when she would Order him to lie down. Maybe she would act like she wasn’t going to and then at the last second turn around and Order him to get on the gurney, to lie still, to stay like that no matter what they did to him and no matter how they hurt him.

Cisco’s gaze flickered over to the door as he heard voices and footsteps approaching it. He was careful not to turn his head, because doing so without permission meant punishment.

It was the same Handler as before that walked through the door, accompanied by a tall human man (another Handler maybe?) wearing a loose shirt. For a moment Cisco thought that it was someone completely new, but then he listened closely and realized that the heartbeat was the same as the one that had belonged to the Asset that had brought him to this new facility.

But… Then why weren’t they in a cage? Why weren’t they locked up in a cell? Chained to the wall? Why were they being allowed to roam free? Wasn’t that a blatant violation of the Rules?

The Asset and the Handler seemed to be talking to each other, or at least the Asset was talking to the Handler. They must have had permission. There was no way that they would have been able to speak so freely otherwise. Especially to a Handler.

Then the Asset caught sight of Cisco, and their voice trailed off as their jaw dropped. The Handler followed their gaze and their face paled.

The Doctor nodded to them. “I know,” she murmured, although Cisco still heard her clearly. “It’s… Bad. Worse than we thought.”

“And we still don’t know who did this?” The Handler sighed.

The Doctor shook her head and pointed to a chair. “No. Sit down, we still have a lot of stuff to get to. Barry, you’re just here to make sure that… Uh, whoever our metahuman is, he doesn’t use his powers to cause any damage to STAR Labs.”

The Asset (Barry? But Assets didn’t  _ get _ names) nodded and saluted the Doctor. Oh, maybe they were supposed to do that here to show that you were going to Obey one of the Orders that they had given you. Cisco would have to remember that. He would show them that he could Obey Orders like a good Asset, that he would follow them to the letter and never overstep his boundaries. He would know his place.

It took quite some time before the Doctor (where was the Supervisor? Usually there was a Supervisor who watched all of the tests to make sure that they were being carried out correctly) was finished with whatever it was that she was doing to him. None of it hurt, much to Cisco’s surprise, and she told him what she was going to do before she did it.

Of course, that’s what happened with Eiling at the facility too. He had wanted Cisco to know exactly what was going to happen to him the next time that he decided to break one of the Rules or Disobey one of the Orders that Eiling had given him.

Then the Doctor stood back, and Cisco knew that now she was going to start testing him.

“I would like to take some blood from you, if that’s alright with you,” the Doctor said. Cisco blinked. Who was she asking? The other Handler? Maybe the Supervisor was watching them over the security cameras, making sure that everything was done properly. That every test or punishment happened the way that they wanted it to be carried out.

But nobody said anything. Nobody moved. And the Doctor woman was still looking at him expectantly.

Oh! Maybe it was an Order in disguise. Maybe they wanted him to say yes so that he would  _ think _ that he had a choice, but if he Disobeyed then he would be punished.

Hesitantly, fearing a blow, Cisco held out his right arm. The Doctor smiled at him and picked up a needle. Cisco tensed. No, he didn’t want to be drugged, no, he didn’t want to be poisoned and tested like some sort of lab rat. Please. Please. He didn’t want to be tied down and then sliced open. Never again, never again, please don’t hurt him, he didn’t want, please…

Instead of injecting him full of some strange substance, the Doctor woman just slipped the needle into one of the veins in his arm and then drew some blood. Ah, so today was another blood taking day. Cisco waited for the Doctor to fill more and more glass vials with his blood until he could barely walk, but instead of doing that she just pulled the needle out and then stuck something on his arm that kept the bleeding to a minimum.

“Good job,” the Doctor said, smiling at him again. She glanced over at the Handler and at the other Asset before biting her lower lip. “Can I see your back again? Please?”

Cisco froze. No, what would happen, he didn’t want to be whipped again, please, he knew that he deserved punishment but he didn’t want to be whipped, no no no no no no.

_ (“Sleeping without permission, Asset 005?” _

_ “N-no, sir, I wasn’t, I swear, please don’t-”) _

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” the Doctor woman said. “It’s okay.”

Cisco stared at her. What? Assets didn’t get a choice. Assets were weapons. They didn’t deserve one.

(He hoped that he would at least be allowed to get his shirt back. It helped keep him warm. But Cisco knew that it wasn’t at all likely. Since he wasn’t allowed to own anything, whatever he had could be taken without warning at any time. Just so that he would learn his place. Or sometimes simply because a guard or Eiling felt like it.)

The Doctor woman looked at the other Asset. “Barry, will you take him back down to the Pipeline? Make sure that he has fresh food and more water.”

The Asset nodded and stood up, holding out his hand to help the Handler to his feet. Maybe that was another Rule; that you had to help them even with small tasks. The Handler ignored the hand and got up on his own, waving the Doctor over to him.

“He didn’t eat any of his dinner,” he muttered into her ear at levels that would have been inaudible to anybody except for her and Cisco. “Just… Stayed in one spot without sleeping all night-I even checked the security cameras to see if he had gotten up or tried to escape at all. It was kind of creepy.”

The Doctor frowned. “He’s practically a skeleton. He needs to eat. It would be better if we could just hook him up to an IV, but based off of all of his scars…”

The Handler shuddered. “How do you think he got all of those? Especially that one on his chest. It looked like it came from… Well, you know.”

“It’s sick,” the Doctor agreed. “We need to know who did it. That’s  _ torture,  _ it’s inhumane, and it’s absolutely illegal.” She looked back over at the Asset and at Cisco. “It’s awful.”

The Asset smiled at Cisco. “Come on, let’s go back down to the Pipeline. We’ll work on getting you some blankets or something too, alright?”

Cisco looked at the Handler and at the Doctor. He needed permission from them before he could go anywhere. Permission from another Asset didn’t count. It never counted. Ever. And if he thought that it did, then he would have to be punished for making such a big mistake.

The Handler and the Doctor exchanged glances and the Handler cleared his throat. “Uh, you can follow him.”

Cisco hopped off of the gurney and stood next to the Asset, who kept smiling at him. “Come on.”

As the Asset led Cisco back down through the facility toward the elevator (how come they weren’t monitoring their every movement? It would be possible for the Asset to escape if they didn’t watch him closely), they turned to the teenager and stuck out their hand. “My name’s Barry.”

Cisco looked at the hand. What did they want him to do? Touch it? Was it injured in some way? Was ‘Barry’ trying to give him a warning of some kind? He didn’t understand.

After a moment the other Asset let their hand drop back down to their side. “Well, uh, can you tell me your name? Not your, er, number, but your name. You do have a name, don’t you?”

Cisco nodded. He may not have been able to tell this other Asset his name without express permission from the Handlers or from the Supervisor, but he could at least let his fellow weapon know that he had one. Couldn’t he? Was this Asset testing him too? They had been the one to bring him here, after all. Maybe they were allowed to give Orders and to do tests? But the Asset hadn’t hurt him yet, even though they had had plenty of different chances too.

“You don’t have to tell me,” ‘Barry’ said finally after seeming to realize what part of the problem was. “It’s okay.”

As they made it to the elevator, Cisco took a deep breath and started working up the courage to ask ‘Barry’ a question. He needed to know the answer, and asking a fellow Asset was safer than asking someone like a Supervisor or a Handler.

So he bounced from foot to foot (before stopping when he realized that that was probably against the Rules) and took a deep breath. “C-can I ask a question?”

The other Asset beamed so widely Cisco thought that their face would split open as they stepped into the elevator with the teenager following after him. “Yeah, sure, of course you can!”

“Wh-what are the Rules here?” Cisco asked, just as the elevator door opened again to reveal the still-open cell door.

Barry frowned slightly. “Uh, I mean, you can’t… Kill people? That’s-that’s pretty much it, I guess. And don’t hurt anybody on purpose.”

Cisco blinked owlishly. Maybe it would be okay to ask another question if it was a part of the first one? “N-no, I mean, the  _ Rules.  _ L-Like when you can eat. And sleep.”

Barry knitted his eyebrows. “Um, whenever? If there’s food, you can eat it. Or drink if there’s water, that’s a part of it.”

“But what are the  _ Rules,”  _ Cisco repeated, trying to make Barry understand that he needed to know so that he knew what not to do. What he had already done to deserve punishment and how to avoid making the same mistakes again. “I need to- _ please- _ I have to know _ ,  _ what are the Rules?”

Barry still looked confused. He glanced at the elevator before holding up his hand. “Uh, wait here? For just a second, okay? I’m gonna go get Caitlin. She might be able to, uh, explain the rules. Okay?”

Cisco nodded and froze in place. Since he didn’t know the rules, he didn’t know how they did things, and if Orders for Assets counted as proper Orders. Just in case they did, he had to wait and stay still. If they turned out not to count, then he would be (hopefully minorly) punished, but if they did then he would have Obeyed like a good Asset.

He didn’t have to wait for long before the elevator opened once again, and this time Barry was followed by the Doctor. Maybe he hadn’t been able to find Caitlin? Because surely the Doctor woman herself couldn’t be Caitlin, or at least the Caitlin that Barry had been looking for (seeing as how she had introduced herself to him as Caitlin, which meant that she probably shared a name with the Asset that Barry had tried to find). Assets weren’t allowed to call Handlers, Doctors, or Supervisors anything other than ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am.’ It wasn’t allowed.

Barry nodded to Cisco. “He wanted to know the rules. I told him that they’re just, like, not killing or hurting people, but…”

The Doctor nodded and smiled reassuringly at Cisco, who made himself stay still instead of pulling back. “It’s okay.” She paused and chewed her lower lip. “How about… How about you tell us what the rules used to be? So that I can tell you how they’ve changed.”

Cisco shivered nervously. He was pretty sure that that was permission, wasn’t it? Maybe that meant that he could talk. Barry certainly seemed to be able to do so without much permission. So maybe… Maybe he would be allowed to. Or at the very least not punished if he spoke. Because she clearly wanted to know if he remembered all of the Rules and would Obey them, even if there weren’t any new ones.

“W-well,” he began, looking at the floor and hugging his shoulders nervously, “one of the old Rules said that eating without permission is forbidden. And so is sleeping. A-and if you do either of those things then you get punished. Talking without permission is not allowed, especially complaining. If someone fights back during a test then they will be punished because it’s not allowed. Always refer to someone as ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am.’ Any sign of Disobedience is punishable-”

“No,” the Doctor interrupted him, and Cisco’s mouth snapped shut as fast as he could close it as his heart jumped into his throat at the threat of punishment. “No, it’s not like that here, none of that is like that here, okay?”

Cisco ducked his head down into his shoulders. So he had been right to think that there was a new set of Rules here. Maybe asking would get him in trouble, but then at least he would know what the new Rules were so that he could try not to break them. (At least any more than he already had.) “Th-then what are they? C-can you please tell me?”

“Well, to start with,” the Doctor began, shooting Barry a look that Cisco couldn’t define but knew probably had something to do with an Order, “you can sleep whenever you want without permission. And if there’s food in front of you, you can eat it. You don’t have to call anybody ‘Sir’ or ‘Ma’am’ unless you want to because you don’t know their name. You can talk all you want-it isn’t against the rules, I promise. Nobody here will hurt you.”

Cisco stared at her disbelievingly. This had to be a trick. A test of some kind to see if he would keep Obeying the Old Rules or start paying attention to what the new people had told him to do. They probably wanted him to keep following the same Rules that he had been; hopefully, they had all of Eiling’s notes. If they didn’t…

He hated to think of all of the tests that they would do on him. If they didn’t have any record of what Eiling and the Doctors had done to him, they would probably want to do everything over again. Most likely with even more painful twists.

Barry reached out to set his hand on Cisco’s shoulder, but he paused before he could make contact as Cisco flinched away and let his hand fall back down to rest at his side. “Hey. It’s okay. You don’t have to know all of this stuff yet. It’s fine that you don’t. C’mon, let’s go back to your… Cell. I’ll, uh, even ask Hartley get you a blanket to sleep with the next time that he goes out. Would that be alright? And some new clothes.”

“You’ll need a toothbrush, too,” the Doctor said, eyeing him. Cisco shuddered. He didn’t like it when people looked at him like that, because it always meant that they were going to do bad painful tests to him. Even if the Doctor had had a perfect opportunity to do so and let it go to waste, that didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to in the future. “And toothpaste.”

Barry nodded in agreement with the woman. “A pillow, too. Oh, and maybe a book or something.”

A book? Another book about building and making and thinking up ideas for things? Cisco liked them. Kind of. He didn’t like that he didn’t have any choice in the matter of what he read, although he knew that it was a part of the Rules to Obey Eiling. But he liked the books themselves. They made sense, the little numbers and letters forming unfamiliar words that labelled parts.

Cisco rocked on the balls of his bare feet. Should he go into the cell? He hadn’t been Ordered yet…

The Doctor looked at the open door of Cisco’s cell. “You can go in while we do those things, alright? And eat the food, if it’s still good. You’re too skinny. Drink as much of the water as you can, too.”

Cisco did as she Ordered, leaning against the back wall as the door closed once again. Instead of moving the way that it had before, the cell stayed in one place at the mouth of the strange tunnel. The Doctor and Barry turned around and walked together back down the hallway. Cisco watched them leave, confused as to why the Doctor woman had told him to eat.

Yes, she was giving him permission, but… Why? It didn’t make any sense. Maybe they wanted him to be stronger? So that they could do more tests on him. That might have been it, and probably was, but if he was stronger then there would be more danger of him fighting back. Well, that meant that he would have to show them that he wasn’t going to eat. Even if he had permission, he would show them that he was still going to Obey their Orders and be a good Asset for them. Cisco wouldn’t eat until he was sure that they really wanted him to. No matter how long that took or how hungry he got.

Cisco tucked his knees up to his chest. He could do it. He had spent a long time without food before, and he would do it as many times as he had to in order to prove to these new Handlers that he was always a good Asset.

He wondered how they were going to mark him as theirs. Barry had that red suit with the lightning insignia. But what would they make Cisco have? A suit like Barry’s? A-another brand, like the one that Eiling had given him forever ago, the one that still ached sometimes when it was too cold?

_ (Cisco screamed and thrashed, trying to break free from Eiling’s grip. He could feel his skin bruising under the man’s fingers. No, no, no, he was too weak and tired and hungry and thirsty, please, wherever Eiling was taking him was somewhere that he knew he didn’t want to go. _

_ “Stop fighting,” Eiling spat, letting go with one hand for just long enough to punch Cisco in the face before grabbing him again. “You know better than that, Asset 005.” _

_ “Stop calling me that!” Cisco shouted furiously, ignoring the blood dripping out of his nose. “My name is Cisco! Francisco Ramon! Stop calling me an Asset!” _

_ “You  _ are _ an Asset, brat,” Eiling growled. “My Asset. And the sooner you learn that, the easier that it will be for you.” _

_ Eiling shoved him into a room and slammed him face down onto a table, making Cisco cry out in pain and fear. Eiling started adjusting the straps and attaching them to Cisco’s wrists, ankles, neck, and waist, even as the boy yelled at him to stop and let him go.) _

Cisco shivered and tucked in on himself. He was tired, so tired, but he hadn’t been given permission to sleep yet. Which meant that he wasn’t going to until he was allowed. Anything less was a sign of Disobedience. And that was punishable.

He rubbed his eyes. Everything here was so  _ new _ and  _ confusing  _ and  _ strange,  _ with the Not-Orders and the way that they treated their other Asset. Why was Barry allowed to run free? Why hadn’t he been punished for doing something wrong yet, because surely he had broken at least a few Rules already? Why… Why was everything so strange and backwards?

And Bette. Bette was dead. She was dead and gone and Eiling had  _ killed her, _ and now he wouldn’t be able to ever see her again. Never be able to press against her after a nightmare. Never hear her comforting heartbeat in his ear.

Because she was dead.

And soon, Cisco knew that he would probably be the same way.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is the first in a series.


End file.
